Even setting aside the proverbial day jobs — commodities trader, massage therapist, fighter pilot, neurosurgeon, waiter — a working actor’s resume is apt to make the head spin.
Take Moses Goods, who on Thursday returns to the Maui Arts & Cultural Center in his new showm “Paniolo: Stories & Songs from the Hawaiian Cowboy.” Born on Valentine’s Day 1977 in Washington, D.C., to a mother from Hana and a father from Virginia, raised on Maui and trained on Oahu, Goods has carved out a niche as the Strolling Player Who Talks Story. In that guise he keeps alive the memory of islanders who made a difference, whether posterity cultivates their legacy or not.
By now Goods has scripted and performed quite a catalog of well-traveled, award-winning one-man shows such as “Duke,” as in Kahanamoku, and “My Name Is ‘Opukaha‘ia,” in which he channeled the kingdom’s first Christian, a spiritual torch to some, to others his people’s Judas.
Even so, finding himself has taken Goods some time. He first stumbled into a drama class at Maui High School and loved it. But the athlete he still was stood his ground against the theater geek he started wishing to be. That changed when he enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and he has been acting ever since.
“When I started my career,” Goods said recently from Honolulu, “I had a longing to hear and tell stories about Hawaii, stories of our own. There weren’t many opportunities. So, I went up for all sorts of other things. I did lots of Shakespeare, some musicals …”
Working exclusively in the 808 area code, he stuck an early feather in his cap as the Satan figure Mephistopheles in a rare staging of Goethe’s “Faust” by UH’s Department of Theatre and Dance. Unlike most, this one didn’t call it quits after the famous first part of the tragedy, but went the distance, also tackling the vast, intractable second part, with its cast of thousands, including a homunculus, Helen of Troy and the Virgin Mary, in back-to-back performances.
“That was a highlight for sure,” Goods said. “Each half was over three hours long. I got a taste of everything. My first Shakespeare was Coriolanus” — a title role, if you please, and a great one, of a hot-tempered Roman general under the thumb of his mother.
“My only Shakespearean comedy was ‘Twelfth Night’ (at Paliku Theater). I was Duke Orsino.” That’s the moony snob who falls for his page — happily for him, a shipwrecked maiden in disguise.
“I was never involved with any of the famous musicals,” Goods continued, “but I was the male lead in a children’s show (at UH) called ‘No One Will Marry a Princess With a Tree Growing Out of Her Head.’ I loved that!”
Really? “Oh, yes! I tried to look it up once, and I couldn’t find a trace of it. But it exists! It wasn’t something cooked up locally. I have no idea who wrote it.” (Google to the rescue: Michael Elliot Brill, book and lyrics; David Jackson, music.)
But maybe the most intriguing item on the actor’s rap sheet is Shakespeare’s Othello, another title role, with the Maui Academy of Performing Arts in 2007. With his tribal features and kingly bearing, Goods is easy to picture in the role, even if that early stab at it was (as one suspects it was) premature. His careful diction and the warm buzz on his sturdy baritone seem right, too.
By now there’s also a notch on his belt (just one) for “Hawaii Five-0.”
Back, however, to the business at hand. In “Paniolo” Goods is joined by the singer-songwriter Kapono Na‘ili‘ili of Waimea, Hawaii island’s last paniolo stronghold. Together they play many parts.
Early on they portray the Mexican brothers Salvador and Alejandro of “Tejas,” two of the vaqueros who brought the Wild West to Hawaii before the Wild West as such existed on the mainland. In another segment, the actors sing of the forgotten Ioane Ha‘a — part Robin Hood, part Braveheart — and the way he lost his hand.
And let’s not forget Ikua Purdy, the surprise champion of the first World Championship Rodeo at Frontier Days in Cheyenne, Wyo. To close, Goods and Na‘ili‘ili strike a quiet blow for diversity, bringing a hint of “Brokeback Mountain” (minus the heartbreak) to the festive rodeo parade in Makawao, the town that is Maui’s answer to Waimea.
The actors aren’t the only ones shape-shifting through the evening. There’s also a king-size wooden horse, which is not always a horse.
“When we did the original run of ‘Paniolo’ in Honolulu,” Goods said, “that horse was the centerpiece of the show. A giant horse! Which rotates, which you see from different angles. But it’s hard to tour a giant wooden horse. So, we’ve restaged the play with just a stool, and for most places that works fine.”
No doubt it can, if the actor can engage the spectator’s imagination. Still, great production values are boffo, too, and for the Maui engagement the wooden horse is crossing the water.
Always juggling multiple projects, Goods is staring down deadlines on his first musical, a sort of Hawaiian “The King and I” he’s developing with author, playwright and Honolulu Star-Advertiser columnist Lee Cataluna. Once again it’s a case of opening a window on forgotten history.
“We don’t normally hear about the monarchs as children,” Goods noted. “What was it like?”
Rehearsals for the “Chief Children’s School” are scheduled to begin next month. A second script, “Lovey Lee,” based on the life of a close friend, is the coming-of-age story of a gay Hawaiian in the 1970s.
“The first draft is due next week,” Goods said. “Wish me luck.”
And beyond those projects? “I’ve made it my mission for a good long while to get Hawaiian stories onstage,” he said. “Now that it’s no longer the case that we can’t see those stories, I’m happy to think about branching out. But Hawaiian stories will always be part of what I do.”
Is the time coming for another Othello?
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‘PANIOLO: STORIES & SONGS FROM THE HAWAIIAN COWBOY’
>> Where: Castle Theater, Maui Arts & Cultural Center, One Cameron Way, Kahului
>> When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
>> Cost: $28
>> Info: 242-7469 or mauiarts.com
Matthew Gurewitsch comes to Hawaii from three decades in New York as a cultural commentator for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other media. Browse his archive at beyondcriticism.com.
